J n ef( <<...-r ,& ct\'\ w '\ I 1J \V I GJ r;= rr '--- r 1-- ( F L" 6 0- " )} i v 8 Off and on since 1949, from seminary and boarding school, from the obstetri- cal floor of \Voman's HospItal and the exchange-students' writing room below the waterline on the Queen Eliz- abeth, between, as it were, exams and dress rehearsals and matins and two- 0' clock feedings, all four of these dignI- taries have been laying down, through the mail, a series of unspecified but dis- cernibl) black ultimatums of what win happen to me unles I do something, soon, about Seymour's Poem . It should in short, to a species of literary shut-in that, I don't douht, can be co- erced or bullied pretty successfully by mail. Ev- erybodv, anyhow, has a saturation point, and I can no longer open my post-office box with- ou t excessive trepida- tion at the prospect of finding, nestled among the farm-equipment circulars and the bank statements, a long, chat- ty, threatenIng postcard from one of my broth- ers or sisters, two of whom, it seems peculiar- 1) worth adding, use ball-point pens. My second main reason for decidIng to let go of the poems, get them published, is, in a wa), much less emotional, really, than physical. (And it leads, I'm proud as a peacock to sav, straight to the swamps of rhetoric. ) The effects of radio- active particles on the human body, so topical in 1959, are nothing new to old poetry-lov- ers. Used with moder- ation, a first-class verse i an excellent and usu- ally fast-working form of heat therapy. Once, in the Army, when I had what might be termed ambulator) pleurisy for something over three months, m} fi rst rea] relief came only when I had placed a perfectly innocent- looking Blake lyric in m) shirt pocket and worn it like a poultice for a day or so. Ex- tremes, though, are always rIsky and or- dinarily downright baneful, and the dangers of prolonged contact with an) poetry that seems to exceed what we mo,;t familiarly know of the first-class are formidablt. In any case, I'd be re- lieved to see my brother's poems moved out of this general ,;man area, at least for a whIle. I feel mildly but extensively burned. And on what seems to me the soundest basis: During much of his ado- lescence, and an his adult life, Seymour WdS drawn, first, to Chinese poetrv, and 4 n ......:..' ". .:. ". "," . ," \.'-/) \I \' . \ í . . IL r .K F -/L'y( F I .., ) \ \ 'I I ! I l' 7 iii 9 [J V rt /# ) $ }( " " If ( \r-Cttm -===- . l1 \ '.. fJiP (@l j ; ) . '( ví \ \' be noted, perhaps immediately, that be- sides being a writing man, I'm a part- time English Department member at a girls' college in upper New York, not far from the Cdnddidn border. I live alone (but catless, I'd like every- body to know) In a totally modest, not to say cringing, little house, set deep in the woods and on the more inaccessI- ble side of a mountain. Not count- ing students, faculty, and middle-aged waitresses, I see very few people during the working week, or yedf. I belong, 49